Video timeline: 00:00 – Intro to Frank Sinatra’s Iconic House 00:39 – A Completely Blank Canvas 01:14 – E. Stewart William’s First Architecture Project 01:53 – The Original Floor Plan 02:19 – A Typical Palm Springs Type Home 03:02 – Indoor and Outdoor Fusion 03:23 – The Many Moods of Modernism 03:40 – Enveloping and Warm 03:59 – The Unity of Nature and Architecture 04:38 – Balanced Light 05:15 – Frank Sinatra’s Love of the Desert
First built when there was nothing but mountains and desert, Twin Palms helped establish the architectural shape of Palm Springs. As Twin Palms was the first home designed by E. Stewart Williams, the iconic house offers a softness and comfortability that its original owner, Frank Sinatra, desired. Throughout this iconic house, E. Stewart Williams has provided fun, pleasure, privacy and respite, for the home’s first owner to its current occupants.
Though the midcentury home was built in 1947 for Frank Sinatra, E. Stewart Williams’s complex yet soft design has remained mostly intact, with the only change to the floor plan being the entrance, which was moved to the opposite side of the street to provide a dramatic arrival. Additionally, the original furniture and kitchen appliances remain, adding to the home’s interesting history.
For the rest of the exterior and interior design, the softness and expression of pleasure and place are articulated with the interior columns that are rounded instead of straight – an idea that helps to soften the environment and avoid the harshness of geometric design. With the architecture of homes in Palm Springs being designed with respect to the mountains, there is a sense of unity between nature and structure that exists in the iconic house. Further deepening this, E. Stewart Williams provides an overarching sense of indoor and outdoor living through the colour choices, materials and form of the iconic house.
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